“Man with a movie camera”For some reason I related this film to Andy Warhol, don’t ask me why. Then read it was made by a guy from the soviet union, which changed my expectations a lot. I got to say that a movie from 1929 didn't sound very exiting. This film is just fantastic. I thought Koyaanisqatsi was the ground zero when talking about documentary-like-experimental-films, so now I dont respect Godfrey Reggio as much as I did before. I mean Vertov is the true genius.

I’m assuming this is an experimental film, but for that matter; is Koyaanisqatsi an experimental film? Or is this a documentary? Again, the ambiguity of cinema. Now, although it is a really interesting film, I got to attribute part of my excitement to the music from “The cinematic Orchestra” which I dare yo say builds 50% of the film, maybe less, but I remark; music is really important in this types of films.

From the usual film-making aspect (sound, acting, lightning, etc) there’s not much to talk about. Editing is the major thing; Vertov tried to join two clips together and make them relate in some way, and the film is built over that, lots of non-related clips that are somehow related, with the man with the movie camera in the top layer.

It probably would not have been very exiting to watch the entire film without music. Now, why the “Man with a movie camera”? That man is Vertov, for all I know. The film could exist without having the shots of the man. I’m guessing that Vertov thought the film would need some kind of narrative consistency for the viewer to attach onto, otherwise the film would be complete chaos, it would make no sense. OR it was his self cameo, or a cameo to film-making in general, with the man going around filming everything in a very curious and passionate way. One aspect I cant ignore is the use of the the split-screen, it appeared a couple of times during the film. I, of course, thought of my Senior Project where I also used split-screen (unlike Godfrey Reggio). It is...

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...gone against this tradition, and championed images and music over words as their primary filmic device. It should be noted, that although images and music can function alone, there are complementary devices, and when used in conjunction can often be more effective (Flinn, 2000). Vertov’s 1929 Man with a MovieCamera is a multi-linear documentary whilst Melville’s 1967 Le Samourai is a fictional crime thriller. Although completely contrasting narrative types, they both employ this idea of using images and music as their primary filmic device rather than words and dialogue. The central themes in Man with a MovieCamera are the progression of the Soviet Union, celebration of film, as well as the relationship between man and machine. Le Samourai similarly employs devices of images and music to reveal ideals of isolation and solitude, existential ideals of freedom in death and motif’s of the city as a jungle. In analysing the differences and similarities in their use of images and music to reveal their respective themes and idea’s, over two completely different types of film, one can understanding the potential power of these devices over words and dialogue.
Vertov’s Man with a MovieCamera is a non-speaking, non-linear documentary which makes extensive suggestions about the progression of the Soviet Union, which all must be attributed...

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Man with a MovieCamera
FA / FILM 1900 Anatomy of Feature Film
Course Instructor: Firoza Elavia, Ph.D.
Paola Jesamine Cortez
Student no: 213159934
Tutorial 4
October 22 2013
Andre Bazin, a film critic, once said, “Photography does not create eternity, as art does; it embalms time, rescuing it simply from its proper corruption.”1 Like photography, film captures different moments in time and in many cases, it captures, or attempts to capture, real life. Vertov’s film, Man with a MovieCamera (1929), is widely considered to present a recording of ‘life-facts’ or the truth of daily life in the Soviet Union. It is considered a great realist film as it tries to reproduce reality and it tends to be audience centered. Realist films strive to reveal truth about the world, or to show its beauty by imitating of its surface appearance. It attempts to be natural, life-like, and to make it seem like the events could have actually happened in real life. This essay will prove that Vertov’s film, Man with a MovieCamera (1929), in light with Bazin’s view, without any actors, script and an uninterrupted flow does reveal truth about the world.
Man with a MovieCamera, is a unique film. It opens with an empty cinema then seats swivel down, and an audience hurries in and fills them. Roger Egbert...

...﻿Module: What Is Study?
Man with a MovieCamera
Theme: The Everyday
Contents
1. Introduction 3
2. Safety 4
3. Privacy 5
4. Living Conditions 5
5. Conclusion 6
6. Bibliography 7
7. Referencing 7
1. Introduction:
Man with a MovieCamera, directed by Dziga Vertov and edited by his wife Yelizaveta Svilova is a silent film with no actors set in the Soviet Union. We see Soviet citizens at work and at play, going about their lives and daily routines. The film goes through a series of fast motion, slow motion, freeze motion, jump cuts to footage being played backwards. Man with a MovieCamera is a chaotic urban version of the world he lived in adding his own original effect throughout. Vertovs Man with a MovieCamera was voted 8th best movie ever made in 2012 by Sight and Sound poll.1
For me, The Everyday was a key reoccurring theme in Man with a MovieCamera. Vertov shows us the cityscape throughout the movie rather that rural landscapes. His constant shots of machine engines show us the modernity of that time and of their daily lives. In the movie, Vertov followed people going about their everyday chores, work,...

...Man with the MovieCamera:
The Male Gaze
Between every audience and a film there will always lay a camera; this camera may seem transparent or not visible, but nevertheless there is a camera and a cameraperson filming the scenes. Laura Mulvey, within her essay Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, coins the term “male gaze,” where the intermediary, the camera, is metaphorically transformed to the eyes of a male, changing how we view cinema, as well as both men and women immortalized on the silver screen. Dziga Vertov, a Soviet director, wrote and directed an avant-garde, silent documentary film called Man with the MovieCamera in 1929. Despite being famous for its anti-narrative cinematical elements, the film includes a number of narrative developments of human movement in the Soviet Union, which portray power struggles between the government, men, and women. Vertov’s Man with the MovieCamera reflects Mulvey’s psychoanalytic male gaze by abstaining from the use of a visible subject or actors, its use of a wide and unusual variety of cinematic camera techniques, and a male perspective.
Man with the MovieCamera lacks a clear or constant visible subject or actor, and thus supports Mulvey’s theory of the male gaze in cinema. The...

...Vertov believed the camera (Cine/Kino Eye) captures more than the eye is capable of. It can draw attention to the real world by virtue of how images are ‘organised’
The film demonstrates ‘cinema is not about capturing truth but creating a mediated reality that is not least made in the generative process of editing and viewing.’
PARAGRAPH 2
Sequence 2 from Man with A MovieCamera
How the sequence is organized
- -juxtapositions
- editing techniques
- fast motion
The organization of such clips highlights the class distinctions, between the working
class (proletariat) and upper class (bourgeoisie). Vertov felt that cinema had
the power to communicate things such things that the eye cannot see directly.
PARAGRAPH 3
Être et Avoir: in general
Observational style of documentary it attempts to obliterate signs of production and the hand of the film-maker. Être et Avoir therefore presents an unmediated reality.
The observational mode stresses the nonintervention of the filmmaker. Such films cede “control” over events that occur in front of the camera… (Ibid., p. 38)
‘This mode, characterised by long takes and handheld camera that seems simply to follow the action, suggests that the camera is offering a ‘window on the world’. This allows us to simply see what’s happening and make our mind up about the events (there is no voiceover). This mode was...

...Man with the moviecamera and Kinoks by Vertov:
Vertov takes the Kino-eye as perfect and superior to that of the human eye. The scene where the woman washes her face while here eyes were opening and closing then the camera lens opens and closes, it emphasizes that the camera lens is like the human eye but the better version of human sight. What makes it different from the human eye according to Vertov is that it records and transcends time and space.
He believed in the concept of filming factual real life moments and not fiction. In Man with the MovieCamera there is no acting. It is an arrangement of images that is skilfully combined together to create a visual phenomena of fresh perceptions that one will not get to see with the naked eye. Vertov was interested in creating a new world with film making and therefore uses editing like double exposure, split screens, tracking shots, slow and fast motion, because this was not how the human eye saw ordinary things. He did not want to copy what he states as the human’s eye’s work but instead liberating what we get to see by drifting away from copying by being experimental. By Vertov's editing, he gets to create visuals of what he think is best suited for the viewer to see and how they see it therefore carrying the viewers eyes.
Vertov highlights the importance of editing in the film. In the Man...

...Man with The MovieCamera: Shot Change constructs a New Perspective
Avant Garde Film Midterm
11\3\95
Question #4
Time was used by Vertov as an important factor in editing as well as in
the daily lives of humans.
With editing he utilized the essence of time to his advantage. Vertov
wanted a certain rhythm of cuts to exist in the movie. He desired a choppy
effect. The cameras, themselves, were supposed to produce a rithym in movements,
too. The point was he wanted to make as many cuts and rigid motions as
possible to make the film appear as hark jerky as possible to the audience. One
reason was that he did not at all want the continuous motion of normative movies
to be present. He desired the ebb and flow which daily life really is. He
perceived that life was not one smooth ride without any bumps or collisions, but
rather it was kind of unpredictable filled with jarring incidents at every
corner. The other reason for the director's use of cuts and camera movements
was he wanted to make sure people remembered that they were watching a movie and
that they were not in some fantasy land. At one point in the middle of the film
there was a scene with Vertov's wife clipping and editing the movie in a studio.
Then there was a still-frame before the movie continues. This was done so
viewers would again realize they were...

...The Man with a MovieCamera is an experimental 1929 silent documentary film that was created in black and white by Russian director Dziga Vertov. This is a film without scenario and actors but Vertov used different music to bring out slow and fast rhythm. He used the camera to capture real happen and he wanted to show everyday life to the audiences. Vertov used many cinematic techniques to make his film more vivid such as double exposure, fast and slow motions, freeze frames, split screens, different angles (eyes level, high and low), different shots (close, medium and long). In the web site senses of cinema, Dziga Vertov states that “Our eyes see very little and very badly – so people dreamed up the microscope to let them see invisible phenomena; they invented the telescope…now they have perfected the cinecamera to penetrate more deeply into he visible world, to explore and record visual phenomena so that what is happening now, which will have to be taken account of in the future, is not forgotten.” I believe Vertov wanted to show more realistic about living through the camera because he knew that our eyes couldn’t see the whole world, we could only see everything in front of our eyes. He used the camera as eyes to see everyone was doing different things at the same moment. He captured everyday life among humans in Russia. He captured all emotions with important events in their lives. He...